This post is directed to all the individuals that just love Twitter and can’t understand why so many businesses don’t just jump in.

Over the last month or so, I’ve had conversations with individuals from Lowes HQ, Family Dollar HQ, Allen Tate executives, and others. These conversations range from brief discussions at a trade shows to consulting to teaching personalized classes.

When you actually talk with businesses about Social Media, it becomes clearer why they have not simply “jumped in”. It also becomes clearer that most individuals that simply use Social Media do not appreciate the difference.

Why You Love Twitter

If you personally use Twitter, you probably like it for these reasons…

Finding Others

Connecting with Others

Fun and/or Learning

Staying Informed

Access to Others

The more you use Social Media, the more you think more businesses should do so also. After all, wouldn’t it be great to find, connect, learn, stay informed, and access ALL individuals and ALL businesses?

But it’s not quite that easy.

Why Businesses are Scared of Twitter

Even small businesses need to think twice before just jumping in.

At first, Twitter looks like a great marketing opportunity. And it is! After all, check out these stats…

Radio – 38 years to reach 50 million listeners

Television – 13 years to reach 50 million users

Internet – 4 years to reach 50 million people

Facebook – 9 months to add 100 million users

Twitter isn’t on that list, but you get the idea. Social Media is huge. And marketing wants to jump all over it. Go where the people are!

But when your marketing department starts using Twitter, it quickly finds out that people will start talking back. (This media is two-way. It’s not like radio, tv, and magazines!)

So Twitter becomes a customer service issue. With a little imagination, it’s not hard to see how it could become a legal issue, a PR issue, and even an HR issue.

It’s Just Not as Easy for Businesses

See why businesses want to have a plan for using Social Media? See why they all need a Social Media Policy document? (I’ll be posting more about that later.)

So if you are an individual that simply USES Social Media, please be nice to the small and large businesses out there. Many of them want to get involved, but they are going to do it at their own speed. Many of them are making remarkable progress, too.

Let’s be supportive and assist where we can.

Social Media Training

If you are ready to move past just USING Social Media and want to start Social Media MARKETING, please check out our class on it. The next one is September 24, 25.

I’m getting this question more and more from students, clients, etc. Others bloggers at TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, and others have cast their vote. Here are my thoughts…

For those of you that are not familiar with RSS, don’t worry about what it stands for. (No one really knows for sure and it doesn’t matter anyway.) More importantly here is what RSS DOES…

RSS is the method used to track blogs and other content that is updated online. You typically use an RSS reader such as Google Reader. You tell the reader which RSS feeds (typically blogs) you want to keep track of. Then, you can use the reader to see the latest updates on all the RSS feeds you track.

Here’s the problem…

If you’ve used a RSS reader (many have not), you will likely realize that this feels a lot more like work than fun. Every time you look at your reader, you typically have tons of new “unread stuff”. This new stuff may make you feel like you’re missing out. Or even worse, you may spend more and more time trying to keep up on all of it.

Keeping up on email is already a chore for some. Who needs this extra stuff that keeps building up, right?

Well, not really.

Just like anything else, you need to control it. It should not control you. Personally, I still use an RSS reader to track all of the “announcements” from each of the official blogs of each search engine. I check it now and then and only read what is interesting to me. It’s a good way to make sure I don’t miss anything important in my primary industry (search engine marketing).

So why is RSS dead? Why is Twitter better?

RSS will always have a place and is not really dead. Nor will it ever die. It’s a great tool, for many other reasons besides using an RSS reader as described as above.

However, many do prefer watching Twitter instead of an RSS reader. Why? It’s more fun! Also, it’s easier!

See, when you watch Twitter, you will get links to blog posts in your industry (if you follow the right people). However, you don’t get links to EVERY post. You just get the ones that the people you follow recommend. This serves as a natural filter and therefore there is less to keep up on.

Also, it has to do with the way people view the Twitter stream. Many do not try to read EVERY tweet. If some tweets pass by you (especially if you follow a lot of people), it’s no big deal.

See? Less stress.

So what does this mean to you?

If you are a blogger, you probably already link to your new posts from your Twitter account. Smart.

But why not create another Twitter account that will automatically mention whenever you create a new post? We’re doing that over here.

That’s exactly why we offer Google AdWords Training! Google AdWords is Google’s advertising system and if you do it right, you can definitely make money. (Trust me. I do.)

Our next class is coming up quick – September 10, 11, 2009.

And I have some good news! I just got an email from Google offering me free coupons. So guess what? Everyone in the class is going to get two $100 coupons of free Google advertising just for attending.

So lets do the math…

The class normally costs $399.

If you subscribe to our newsletter, you automatically get $100 off. That brings the cost down to $299.

But for this class only, you will also get two coupons for $100 off. If you factor that in, you get the two-day class for $99!

I’ve never had an opportunity like this before (and may never again). So please take advantage of it. In fact, I encourage you to learn more about this class and register soon as there are only a few openings left as of today.

See you then!

PS: As a full disclosure, the two $100 coupons you get need to be used on new accounts. However, if you already have an account, you may just want to kill it and start over after our class anyway. (That happens a lot.)